This is my last post about the flower festival that was held in our little mountain town in Panama. The other day I posted about the bands in the parade and previously about the floats. It is really a fun time, including visiting the fair grounds and carnival!
The parade was held on Sunday, and we knew the fair grounds would be packed on that day! We decided to go on Monday morning to check out the fair. It cost $1.50 to enter for everyone older than 12 years old. It was a pretty good deal!
Monday mornings at the fair grounds are definitely not crowded. As a matter of fact, there were probably less than 100 people there total. This was both great and not so great.
There were not many people walking around, but there were also not many vendors open due to them not expecting many people. Everywhere around the fair grounds has items decorated with flowers. You see them in every corner!
There is a competition each time to see who can make the best flower covered dress on a mannequin. Some of the entries are really cool looking, as you can see.
Some of the vendors sell tourist items, flowers, food, and more. It's interesting to see what is available. There is also a small playground the kids like to play on.
The library for our area is also located here at the fair grounds, and it's just about to open, so people were taking tours of it. It's just a small one-room building, but at least we will have something!
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There is also a stage in the fair grounds. It's decorated with some pretty amazing flowers! There were some kids practicing traditional dance while we were there in the morning. They also have super loud concerts there in the evening and music playing throughout the day.
The reason we went early on Monday (the last day of the fair) was because the kids wanted to go to the carnival and we thought it woudln't be crowded. We were right. It was so uncrowded that they wouldn't even operate the rides. They said more people had to be there before they could start them up...after we waited around for about 2.5 hours for them to start.
After they told us it would be about 3:00 or so before they started the rides up, we decided to go home and do our schoolwork and maybe go back in the afternoon. Tiny horse riding was also an attraction, but we didn't ride them!
While we were waiting around in the morning, the kids looked around and found some unused tickets and tokens for some of the rides, so they insisted that we return in the afternoon so they could use them. When we went back in the afternoon, our friends met us. Each kid was able to ride a few rides and it didn't cost an arm and a leg since they had already found tickets to some.
They had a blast and rode the ferris wheel, bumper cars a few times, and carrousel. Each ride cost $2 I believe, so I was glad they found some tickets before. Having six kids at a carnival definitely adds up! It was a fun time and I was glad we went back in the afternoon so they could ride.